Rocket - in the beginning
by Woozletania
Summary: When you're building a monster, even a little one, you'd be well advised to treat it with compassion. If you don't, if you make its life a living hell, then god help you when it gets loose.


Rocket: In the beginning

It was a little clawed hand, half as long as a man's, and a month before it was a paw. Five-fingered and nimble, a clever paw, but still a paw before surgery, repositioning of bones, and implanted cybernetics turned it in to an actual hand. At this moment the little hand was digging its claws into the thick plastic cover of the operating bed, sinews standing out in the shaved furry wrists as it tried with all its might to either rip free of its restraints or burrow into the bed to escape the pain.

"I told you to get that nerve, Kinkaid," the surgeon snapped. Doctor Kinkaid nodded and touched a plastic wand to one point on the animal's arm and then another. The high, thin whine of agony coming from the animal slowed and stopped, and without being told Kinkaid applied the wand to other points on its body.

"Good," the surgeon said, and continued to cut. The beast's muscles had spasmed so tightly it was impossible to perform proper surgery without doing damage he'd have to repair later. "Can't work on this thing when it's tensed up like that."

Conscious, but paralyzed, the little beast's beady eyes followed the scalpel as it descended. At least the pain had stopped for the moment, but the use of the wand was a skill Kinkaid had not fully mastered and several more times during the operation the creature again let out the agonized whine as he hunted for the right spot to shut off its complaints. The wand was safer than anesthesia and much cheaper, but it did have drawbacks - at least for the subject. As far as the surgeons were concerned it was a marvel of technology, cheap and efficient. They weren't the ones to experience its failures.

"Tell Osterman he finally got that cybernetic damper right," Doctor Ernst said grudgingly. "Last operation the damn thing snapped an armband and almost bit me. Now it can't even stretch them."

Kinkaid nodded, noting that the head surgeon failed to mention that he was the one to subdue the thing with the nerve wand before it got completely free or hurt anyone. The third member of the surgery team, Chang, went about his work of clamping bleeders, monitoring the terrified animal's vitals and occasionally adjusting the amount of replacement blood, artificially created expressly for this creature, he pumped back in to replace losses. Doctor Chang might be a slow conversationalist but his competence was unquestionable.

At each corner of the operating table the antennae for the damping field stood up, an inconvenience for the team but utterly necessary when augmenting a creature this heavily. Over the course of an hour Doctor Ernst implanted four more servos in the creature's spine to finalize the quadruped-to-biped modification. Without the damping field the self-powered servos made it five times as strong as it had any right to be. It was in everyone's best interest to keep its cybernetics shut down unless they were needed for some test.

Director Randolph was watching from the glassed-off viewing area and spoke up through the speakers. "Its back is a mess, Ernst. Do you plan to leave it that way?"

Doctor Ernst shrugged with only his shoulders, his hands staying rock steady as he made another cut. "It's low on the priority list but yes, the plan is to graft over it once we're sure the cybernetics aren't rejected. And that the Uplift takes, for that matter. Tschu said it hasn't passed a single test yet."

The director nodded and asked no further questions. The most dramatic implants had been along the beast's spine and chest, cracking the ribcage and repositioning nearly every bone to turn it into an upright creature instead of a four-legged shambler. Most of its surgeries had resulted in simple clean scars the fur would grow over but its back was a horror of messy, half taken grafts and scarring. It looked more like burn scars than anything else and no doubt caused the creature constant pain but the point of the operation was to test technology, not coddle the beast.

"That's got it," the chief surgeon said an hour later. "Patch it up, we're done for the day." Five hours of painstaking work and the cybernetics upgrades were finally nearly done. Two months of effort he'd poured into the whiny little animal and from what he'd heard it showed no signs of Uplift at all. Doctor Ernst shrugged. As long as he got paid, he didn't care. It was Director Randolph who needed to explain budget overruns when an Uplift or cybernetics project failed.

As always Chang and Kinkaid treated the beast with utmost care, for cybernetics or not it had sharp teeth and enough strength to scratch you. They had long since worked out a series of restraints that could be released and yanked out of its cage when the door was nearly shut. This time they had no difficulty, for five hours of terror and agony reduced the little beast to a shivering, exhausted mass they had to physically slide into its cage before popping the shackles. It curled up in the corner, barely strong enough to drink from the water bottle in its cage. There were cybernetic dampers here too, of course, all too far past the bars for it to reach even if it forced its clever little hands through the gaps.

"Filthy little thing," Chang said, the first words out of him in hours. "Bit me first chance it got, you know."

"Yeah," Kinkaid said. "It's almost like it doesn't like being cut open and crammed full of cybernetics."

They shared a laugh as Kinkaid used his key card to leave the room. Chang plopped himself down in front of a floating monitor screen and jotted down a few notes, calling up records of the operations so far performed on the beast.

He didn't see the beady eyes in the cage behind him studying each word and diagram that passed by on the screen, just as Kinkaid hadn't noticed the thing's well disguised interest in his use of the key card. When he finished taking notes half an hour later and turned away from the screen the beast was to all appearances asleep. Chang checked the padlock that held the cage shut more out of habit than any worry of an escape, then left the room.

The thing he left behind was weak, so weak, but it was learning. It was learning many things but it didn't need to learn to hate. It already knew all there was to know about hate.

In the common room with the refrigerator and vending machines Chang ran into Foster, the backup cyberneticist. Foster was talkative and despite Chang's efforts to merely grunt replies after his long shift he was eventually drawn into a brief conversation.

"I hear Osterman got the dampers working. Guess that means the little bastard didn't get loose this time."

Chang nodded. "Funny thing is, a while back the thing would just lie there even when Kinkaid fucked up the nerve blocks. I was starting to think it had nerve damage or was just so traumatized it didn't feel pain any more. But for the last few days it's back to screaming. I liked it better quiet."

Chang was pouring coffee into his mug and didn't see the worried expression pass briefly over Foster's face. "Maybe it was something to do with all the Uplift. All that nanotechnology upgrading a little animal brain can do unpredictable things."

Chang shrugged. "Or Tschu fried its brain. He keeps zapping it when it fails tests but it's still useless at everything but being annoying."

"Could be a cybernetics conflict. We had that happen with 87C07. I'll stop by and do a quick scan."

His plausible deniability established, Paul Foster made his way to the holding facility. 89P13 was the only subject on hand since 82M33 was euthanized for being too damn clever for its own good. It mauled a guard nearly to death after memorizing a 16-digit cage lock code and getting loose. That's why they used simple key locks now.

His key card let him in to the facility and there was a stirring in the cage. 89P13 knew the sound of his footsteps and the ragged little beast, half shaved, emerged from its corner and pressed its muzzle against the bars. Clever little clawed hands reached as far as they could through the bars as the beast begged.

"Hey little guy. You doing OK?" Paul knew it wasn't. 89P13 had lost five pounds in the last month and it'd only started at fifty. What was left of its pelt had lost its gloss and half of the fur in its once handsome ringed tail had fallen out. Unending misery was breaking the poor thing's spirit and its health despite the team's best efforts to force strength back into it.

89P13 whined pitifully and thrust its hands through the bars. The Uplift may not have fully taken but it was smarter than anyone but Paul knew. It was smart enough to want what he had.

"All right little guy. Here, remember, right when they are setting up the operating table. Not before." Paul glanced around to make sure no one was working unseen in a corner and pulled a bottle out of his pocket. The little green pill he put in the procyonid's hand was the the strongest dose of painkiller he could safely give it. He just hoped it wasn't developing a tolerance for the drug. He didn't dare give it anything stronger.

89P13 pressed the side of its face against the bars and Paul stroked its ragged fur for as long as he dared. "Sorry, guy. I hope this will all be over soon. I hope they don't hurt you any more."

It was a mistake to let yourself feel for the experimental animals. Paul knew that, but there was something about this one that tugged at his heartstrings. The poor broken little beast had never tried to bite him, even when he put his fingers through the bars to scratch its ears. He did all he could to make its hellish existence a little less painful but he still didn't sleep well at night. The only consolation was that from what he had heard 89P13 had failed every single intelligence test. It was bound to be vivisected soon to see what had gone wrong. Its pain, at least, would be over.

Beady feral eyes followed him until the door closed behind him, and alone in its little cage 89P13 pried the one slightly loose wall plate up until the other pills rolled out. With maniacal focus it counted them, passing them from hand to hand over and over. It had four now and the temptation was to eat them this very instant, but it hesitated. It had read the drug's effects and recommended dosages off a screen when a doctor worked on prescriptions a few days back. Three might have been enough, but it was chancy. Four probably was, but if someone came in it might still be revived. One more, though. One more would be enough. One more pill and it could make the pain go away forever.

"Hit him again."

The cyberneticist shrugged and tapped a button. The ragged little beast was more than smart enough to know that motion and it curled into a shivering ball an instant before the nerve shock hit it. Direct neural stimulation was an efficient means of inflicting pain without causing permanent harm and it let out a shriek of agony as every pain receptor in its little body fired at once. Osterman only kept his finger on the key for a second but even when he released it the traumatized beast refused to uncurl from its fetal ball.

"Damn," Tschu said. "Not making any progress at all. Let's try this one."

The little ringtail had a metal helmet on its skull and bolted-in contacts fed data directly into a brain that by all rights should be fully Uplifted by now. Tschu tapped out a series of commands and the one eye they could see in the quivering mass of fur glazed over as complex data was routed into its brain. Weapons, vehicles, tactics, and a special emphasis on mechanical engineering. This was the seventeenth attempt and like all the others all it did was make the little beast shiver and drool.

"Damn it all! This worked on the others! I don't know where we are falling down here." Tschu flicked through twenty diagrams of cybernetic, skeletal, nervous system restructuring. The thing's brain was clearly Uplifted to the point that it should be able to grasp the data, but it still acted like an animal.

He tapped another command and a robotic arm deposited a pistol a few inches from the furry ball. Another tap and the floor the beast lay on electrified momentarily, shocking it out of its paralysis. A few more shocks forced it close to the pistol. By all rights it should be not only able, but practically compelled to field-strip and reassemble the thing, but it just stared stupidly at the pistol and then started to gnaw on the rubberized grip.

"God damn it. Two weeks of this and no progress. Wait until he looks away from the gun and hit him again."

Osterman sipped from his coffee mug and held down the key a little longer this time. Enough pain would get the message through eventually, was his line of thinking.

He did not know how stubborn 89P13 was. The more he hurt it, the more the core of hate and pain and fear in its little chest grew. If he'd known what he was creating on the other side of that glass he'd have tried kindness instead of pain, but he wouldn't learn until it was far too late.

"Oh, you poor little guy. I hoped when they got done with the operations things would get better."

Foster stroked the thin fur atop the animal's bony skull as it pressed its cheek against the bars. "Okay, I didn't want to do this since the pain is so spread out over the day it may not help much, but here."

The little beast was all attention as the bottle came out of his pocket. It had waited weeks for this moment. One more pill, one was all it needed. But its feral eyes were drawn to the thin metal band on Foster's hand. He'd forgotten to take off the decorative ring and suddenly a new plan formed inside the animal's little skull. Paul Foster was in the act of handing over the last pill it would ever take from his hand when its strong little hands darted out.

"Ow!" Foster took an involuntary step back, sucking on his knuckle. 89P13 had lashed out almost too fast to follow and it took him a moment to realize it had yanked the ring from his finger. Now the little beast had the ring clutched to its chest and chittered anxiously, passing it from hand to hand and nosing at it.

For a moment Paul was angry, but the pitiful little thing looked almost happy for a change. Paul sighed. "Okay, little guy. If it makes you happy, you can have it." He bent down and recovered the pill, popping it through the bars. "But remember, you can't let them see this."

89P13 was ignoring him and Paul left with a heavy heart. Maybe the little creature was finally so broken it couldn't interact even when offered kindness. He'd try again tomorrow.

Behind him 89P13 stored the pill with the others, its long held plan to eat all five and sink into painless, peaceful death put off for at least a little while. It gnawed, and pulled, and twisted until the ring was a straight and narrow strip of metal, and then its feral eyes turned on the padlock outside the bars.

"Holy shit, look."

Osterman was already staring. Tschu had remotely unlocked the cage door and instead of needing to shock 89P13 out of the dark interior as usual it came out on its own. It still walked on all fours even though it was fully capable of upright movement now but more importantly it went right to the pistol, the same one as the last failed test, and promptly pressed the magazine release. Its other hand snapped the magazine free and it shook it before looking inside. One look and it dropped it and began to turn in place, searching for something.

"It's looking for a full magazine!" The pistol was a Gauss weapon, simple, easy to maintain and effective and thus common across the galaxy. A series of superconducting magnetic coils lined the barrel, accelerating the projectile without need of propellant, and this allowed for all manner of flexibility in types of ammunition. Anything from solid shot to explosive rounds to flares to drugged darts could be fired from a Gauss gun but the power requirement was high so each magazine came not only with rounds but a built-in battery. A magazine this light meant neither was present. The whole thing, real pistol !or not, was useless and 89P13 had known the second it touched it.

Finding no other magazine the procyonid's eyes went vacant even as its little hands effortlessly stripped the pistol down to its components then put it back together just as rapidly. A masterfully trained human would struggle to do it nearly as fast and 89P13 had never done more than gnaw on such a weapon before.

"I don't know what happened," Tschu told the director two hours later, "But at least part of the Uplift seems to have finally clicked on. 89P13 still can't talk and doesn't seem to understand us but with weapons, at least, it now has some of the knowledge we programmed into it. We need a lot more testing to find its limits but we're finally starting to make progress. I didn't have to zap it even once today and only had to electrify the floor to get it back into the travel cage."

"All right then," Director Randolph said. "I was going to recommend termination and dissection tomorrow or the next day but I'll push that back a week. If it keeps showing progress we'll keep pushing it back until we learn all we can or it shows signs of being dangerous."

He was too late. 89P13 was already dangerous.

Late that night the padlock hung open on its hasp, what used to be a ring and now was a lovingly crafted lockpick protruding from its keyhole. There was the clatter of claws on keys as the little raccoon tried the computer only to find it was locked. It had seen this one used many times and after stubbornly trying a second time it settled down on its haunches to look around.

The holding area for current projects was co-located with a small operating theater, and 89P13 swiftly searched for anything of use. Every container seemed to be card locked, though, and ten minutes later it had tried every drawer and cabinet to no avail. It had escaped its cage only to find it had exchanged it for a somewhat larger one.

89P13 sat and thought once more. It had briefly seen a map of the complex flash by on the screen some days ago and its programmed-in knack for mechanical analysis came to the fore as it considered what it had seen. Slowly the muzzled head turned until it was looking at a set of metal shelves and the ventilator duct above them, much too small for an adult human but not too small for it.

With a chitter of excitement it scrambled up the shelves, faster and far stronger than it was accustomed to being. Here outside of the damping field it was easily as strong as a grown human and the only problem it encountered was unscrewing the cover and swiveling it open without doing any visible damage. That it hurt to move was not a consideration. Between the shoddy work on its back and the so far incomplete adaptation of its body to its many mods every movement hurt, sometimes a great deal. It was used to it. A moment later its ringed tail disappeared into the duct and 89P13 began to explore.

It found three important things that night. The first its nose led him to, and for nearly an hour beady little eyes peered through the slats into Director Randolph's office. From its viewpoint high on the wall it looked over the director's shoulder at his floating computer screen, reading, memorizing. Learning. When it had spent as much time as it dared there it crept back down the vent. A distant hum led it through a series of air vents to a room full of massive equipment and another computer.

89P17 had come via the vents to the complex's reactor room, so heavily fortified that internal security was lax. It forced open the vent and discovered to its joy that this computer, though isolated from the network, was not locked. In a short time the creature absorbed a truly dangerous amount of information regarding the reactor, the complex and even, thanks to some electronic news folders stored on the system, something about the outside world.

The third thing it found was a multi-shelved toolbox which was also not locked. 89P13 went through it, at first trying to take every single tool out of an inexplicable compulsion to collect the chrome-plated objects, then reluctantly leaving almost all of them behind. It took only a few carefully selected ones, a coil of wire-thin cable and a utility knife and after checking the clock on the wall it retreated to the vent, swiveling it shut behind it. It left his prizes at a vent junction and made its way back to the holding area.

Back in its cage with the padlock re-fastened and the lockpick hidden with the pills 89P13 curled up to rest. As it slowly settled down to sleep it considered that the floor plans it had studied in the reactor room computer seemed to indicate it could escape completely from the complex simply by making its way through the vents. It could be free.

But the ball of hate and pain in its chest did not allow it. 89P13 settled down to an uneasy sleep, and even in its dreams it planned terrible things.

"Is it possible it's sandbagging?'

Tschu watched the creature pull apart an energy rifle, its little hands knowing intuitively how to disassemble it in seconds though it had never touched one before. It was the fourth weapon they'd presented to it today and the same happened with each. Yet it still walked on all fours and just stared stupidly at the speaker when he tried to communicate with it.

"Faking being dumb? Why? The direct neural feed that chamber delivers is the most painful thing imaginable. I had to experience it to get my qualification. It's like being burned alive and that thing went through twenty sessions in there before it showed any improvement at all. Pain like that would motivate anyone to cooperate. No, there must be something else. Some interaction between the Uplift and cybernetics."

Osterman rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "That's happened a couple of times but its never had this effect."

"All right," said the director. The third man in the room had been silent up until now. "I'm authorizing a partial vivisection. Tomorrow Ernst can do some work and see if there's something weird happening. You'll need to be there, Osterman. Sorry about that, I know you don't like blood. If Ernst can put it back together afterward, fine, but we've spent enough time on this one. There are always more specimens."

Osterman nodded. Behind the glass the little beast continued to strip and reassemble the rifle, eyes vacant but hands ever busy, and no one had seen the cup-shaped ear swivel toward the glass as the conversation started. It was almost soundproof, that glass. Almost.

It had spent three nights exploring, learning, planning. It wanted a couple more before acting but it would have to be tonight and it'd have to take many risks. The first was to pick the lock and leave the cage earlier than usual. There was a small chance a researcher would happen by but there was no help for it.

The only things it'd found of use in the holding area were a few scraps of surgical tubing and a single latex glove. Briefly it gnawed at the glove to separate a finger, which made a large enough pouch for the five precious pills it'd saved up. A scrap of tubing fastened that to it collar. A quick duck of its head and the pouch would be in its mouth. No matter what happened, it would not go back in the cage. Death was infinitely preferable.

Re-locking the padlock behind it might only buy seconds before someone realized it wasn't inside the cage but those seconds could be vital. A minute later it was in the vent, the cover slid back into place behind it. A tool bag scavenged from a trash can held the few tools it considered vital and it held that in its jaws as it made its way along on all fours.

The reactor room was unoccupied, as usual. It would do more than absorb information from the computer tonight. It'd already learned how to disable the door opening mechanism and the vault-thick door should prevent anyone from getting in without tools and a great deal of work. Plans and schematics flickered through its Uplifted brain as it removed a cover on the side of the reactor, ignoring the WARNING sign, and began to work.

It took only a few minutes to make the changes it had to make. Its pride and joy, a hand-built wristband controller, synced up with the system and 89P13 smiled cruelly. It might die tonight, but what it had just done ensured that it would at least not die alone.

It preferred not to die if it could help it and soon it was back in the vent, following the trail of its own scent back to the first grill it'd looked out of, days before. The smell of man told it the director was at his desk again, working late as usual, and 89P13 had already loosened this grill as well. Furry little hands unwound the wire-thin cable from its spool and quickly bound it in a loop. Director Randolph was about to learn the cost of lax security and cruel experimental practices.

Brenton Randolph looked up from his computer, sure he'd heard something, but he was a manager, not a warrior. By the time he sensed something amiss the coil of wire dropped around his neck and went tight. His hands went to his throat but 89P13 had braced itself against the entrance of vent and yanked with all its strength. Servos whined throughout its body and it gritted its teeth at the pain but Randolph managed only a strangled gasp as the wire sank deeply into his flesh. Lifted nearly from his chair he fumbled only briefly at the dug-in wire before the garrote cut off the blood and air his brain needed.

His death was quick but 89P13 could not make itself let go. It pulled and pulled, fangs showing, until it'd nearly dragged the man's head into the vent, and only then let Randolph slump back into the chair. For a shivering moment the raccoon peered from the vent, little hands re-spooling the wire, before it climbed down atop the body.

It took lanyard and badge from the man's neck and sat in the cooling lap to work the computer. The director's badge and the passwords it'd memorized while watching from the air vent gave it complete access. It soon knew all it hadn't already learned about the compound and with a fanged smile it flicked to the SECURITY page and slammed the entire facility into lockdown. Klaxons sounded, containment doors whooshed shut and an instant later every light save emergency lights and red alarm strobes went out as it pushed a button on its homemade wristband. All the power, even battery backups, ran through the reactor transfer switch and programming it with an intuitive knowledge of electronics and mechanisms would prove a costly mistake for the researchers.

A furry ear flicked and it dropped off the director's lap, scuttling out of view seconds before the beam of a flashlight swept across the desk. The security guard came in through the door looking worried and talking as he walked.

"Director, we've got a problem, the reactor is offline and then there's this lockdown. Do you know anything about -"

His voice trailed off as his light came to rest on Randolph's face, purple from strangulation, tongue protruding and eyes bugged out. He froze for a moment and in that moment a small, shadowy figure leapt from the bookshelf behind him, one clawed hand outstretched and the utility knife in the either.

The guard was a military veteran and reacted almost instantly to the impact of nearly fifty pounds of test subject on his back. Almost instantly was not fast enough. One of 89P13's cybernetically augmented hands dug into his hair and in the half-second before he managed to throw the strong but diminutive attacker off his back the inch-long blade of the utility knife came in under his ear and sank easily into flesh.

It was not a tidy death. 89P13 got in one good slash before it was sent flying but that was all it took. The security guard clutched at his throat, crimson spraying through his fingers, and as he gagged on his own blood he reached for the holster at his side. He stubbornly refused to give up even as the blood left his brain and his shaking hand held onto the pistol, though there was no target to be seen, until he slipped on his own blood and collapsed, dead where he stood.

89P13 waited until the limp hand finally released the weapon before a furry foot slapped down in the spreading pool of blood. Little clawed hands dragged the pistol eagerly from nerveless fingers and 89P13 snapped the magazine out of the pistol, feeling the weight and noting the LED indicating a fully charged battery before clicking it back into the grip. For the first time Project 89P13 stood upright, the oversized weapon ready in its hands, and for the first time it laughed.

"Did you hear that?"

Doctor Tschu gave up on swiping his key card against the lock and turned to Chang. "Hear what?" There was little to see but the pale glimmer of an emergency light down the hall and the flashing red of the lockdown strobe. He fumbled for the little flashlight he kept in his pocket in case Chang was right.

"I thought I heard a door op-"

There was a wet thump like a dropped melon and Chang looked down at the hole that suddenly sprouted in his ID badge. He reached curiously for the spreading red stain on his shirt before toppling over without a word.

The whine of the recharging barrel capacitor was the first thing Tschu heard and he turned his flashlight that way. There was a green flash of eyeshine and as it grew near he saw the lighter fur around the dark bandit's mask.

"89P-" white fangs suddenly stood out in the dark and there was another wet thump. It wasn't until he found himself looking at the floor from close up that Tschu realized he'd been shot. He'd barely even felt it, just a tap on his cheek, but he could see someone's ear - probably his - lying between him and Chang's body.

'This is a survivable wound,' he thought with an odd clarity. 'Not much blood on the floor, brain still working. I could probably even get up if I wanted to.' Instead he lay there watching a furry pair of feet go by, and the little procyonid bend down to take something from Chang. His badge and lanyard, it looked like. The feral thing turned toward him, their eyes met, and then there was just the the grin spreading across its face as the plastic pistol came up to point between his eyes.

A slow, maniacal laugh was building in 89P13's chest. It had three ID badges now out of the six or so it wanted, the all-important director's badge of course (the only one that would open doors during lockdown) plus Chang and Tschu. It felt a momentary regret for not making Tschu suffer more. Its programmed combat skills warred with its burning desire to make them hurt as much as they'd hurt it. So far the programming had won out. It had managed to at least kill them, though, and it giggled as it followed its nose to its next target.

If it chose not to search for more scientists it could be out of the complex in five minutes. That was the wise thing to do. It was not the thing it was going to do.

It paused, sniffing, whiskers twitching, by an elevator door. There was a familiar scent coming through the crack and the director's card would unlock this door, too. With a whine of servos it managed to get the elevator open far enough to see the car stranded a floor and a half down. Osterman, the scent said. Osterman, who liked the pain button. Osterman, who it wanted to meet again very badly. The grin had not left its face since it killed Tschu and Chang and it grew still broader as it clambered down the emergency ladder built into the shaft wall.

There were no alarm strobes in the elevator car and Phil Osterman was tapping his foot out of annoyance rather than fear. No one was answering the elevator emergency phone but while getting stuck here was irritating it was only a matter of time before the power was restored.

He didn't see the beady eyes peering down through the half-opened emergency hatch and it was Phil's bad fortune to be scratching his cheek at the exact moment the wire noose dropped around his neck.

89P13 grinned and tugged on the bolt it'd tied to the other end of the cable , just as it had when it garroted Director Randolph. This time it was more restrained, though. It pulled until Doctor Osterman was forced to stand tiptoe to keep the cable from biting deeply into his neck and then wound the free end around a beam in the side of the elevator shaft.

Osterman's wrist was trapped in the loop next to his neck and kept him from immediate death but the wire was far too strong to break and he could only fumble at it desperately where it sank into his neck. Any attempt to pull it off with the trapped hand just made it sink in deeper and all he could do was gasp and strain to stand as tall as possible.

At first it wasn't too hard to stand on tiptoe but slowly his legs tired and every little bit he sagged made the cruel wire dig in harder. He reached for the elevator phone but it was just out of reach and at that moment something furry and cackling dropped onto his shoulders. A little clawed hand grabbed him under the chin and he gasped as nearly fifty more pounds of weight made his struggle to stay bolt upright even harder. 89P13 giggled as it freed the lanyard and badge from his chest, adding them to the three already hanging around its neck, and with a sadistic grin it leaned backward while digging its claws into Phil's shoulders. That was all it took to unbalance him and he let out a last strangled gasp as his full weight made the wire sink into his neck. His clutching fingers grabbed momentarily at 89P13, pulling hairs from the ragged little creature's unhealthy pelt, and then there were just the beady feral eyes peering into his own as the blood to his brain was cut off.

89P13 waited until the last twitches were passing through the dangling corpse's body before leaping up to the trapdoor. This one had been better. This one it'd seen suffer. It scrambled up out of the elevator shaft and stood on all fours sniffing. It had not yet run out of people it badly wanted to meet and its whiskers twitched with joy at a new scent. A swipe of the director's badge opened one door, and then another, and there before it was its prey.

"Ernst," it cackled, the first intelligible word it ever spoke. "Ernst, Ernst, Ernst."

The man trapped in the hallway turned and saw the small, furry figure. "What...god, 89P13? What's happening?"

"Doc-Tor Ernst," it said, and set the pistol down on the floor just outside the door A swipe of the director's card and it and the doctor were trapped in the short length of corridor. "Doc-Tor. Heh, heh, heh."

Ernst watched wide-eyed as it pulled something from a pouch. The utility knife was far too large for its little hand but cybernetics made it more than capable of using it and the inch long, razor sharp blade clicked out. "Scal-pel please Doc-Tor, heh, heh."

It took a step forward, then another, and Pavel Ernst took one back, but there was nowhere to run. Pavel had been a soldier once, and all these years later there was still muscle under the fat.

"I spent two months making you, you little monster. I can take you apart again."

"Yes," giggled the furry little thing as it stepped closer. "Try."

With a snarl of rage Doctor Ernst did his level best to punt 89P13 into the wall, but the hairy cyborg slipped to the side and laid his thigh open with the knife. Ernst's second swing clipped the little creature's head but it was tough all out of proportion to its size and every time its little hand moved he bled. It was fast and strong and he would have been proud to call it his creation if it weren't killing him. Eventually he slipped in a puddle of his own blood and 89P13, having learned from a master where vital tendons are located, cut the one behind his ankle and he went down.

"God," gasped Ernst. "Please stop."

The horrible thing let out a giggle as it stepped closer, the blade red in its hand. "Oper-a-tion not done yet, Doc-Tor."

Though it was very careful and had seen enough surgeries from a first person perspective to know where to cut without inflicting a fatal injury, the screaming still did not last nearly as long as 89P13 had hoped.

Doctor Paul Foster was in the parking bay when the klaxons went off and the doors slammed. He spent the best part of an hour trying to jimmy one open but it wasn't until someone started working on one from the other side that he made any progress. It was a door that led deeper into the complex but it was better than nothing.

The person on the other side had some sort of pry-bar and they'd just managed to get it open a crack when something happened. There was a thump and an incoherent shriek of pain from the other side of the door, followed by another thump and another scream. The whine of a charging Gauss pistol made Paul back away from the door but he could still hear what was going on.

"I told you to get that nerve, Kin-Kaid," said a rasping voice, and there was another thump, and another, and another, interspersed with screams. Deranged laughter came through the crack along with the increasingly loud recharger whine as someone emptied most of a Gauss magazine into David Kinkaid. Even after the scream died to an agonized whimper still the shots continued.

Finally there was silence and Paul backed up until the sliding garage door hit him in the back. Belatedly he moved to hide behind a car but it was too late. There was a whoosh of hydraulics as the stubborn door he and Kinkaid had tried to get through opened, and a little figure stepped through, leaving red footprints in its wake and with a raised pistol tracking him unerringly.

For a moment he didn't recognize it. Little of the original fur color showed through layers of dried and fresh blood, and it wasn't until the pistol aimed at his midsection dropped and it spoke that he realized what he was looking at.

"Fos-Ter," it growled, and somewhere in the voice was the plaintive whine of the horribly abused little creature in the cage. "No. Don't need. Don't need to kill."

"Oh my god. 89P13?"

"No," it growled, and the little muzzle split in a snarl. "Not 89P13. Rok-ket."

"Rocket?'

A bloody hand gathered up the lanyards around its neck and hoisted a mass of ID cards that clicked and rattled. "Ran-dolph, Oster-man, Chang, Kin-kaid, Ernst, Tschu. Rok-ket."

"Oh god. What did you do?"

"What. I. Was. Made. To. Do." It ground out, and once again the pistol came up only to shake for a moment and drop back to its side. "But not Fos-Ter. Go," it said, and it moved to the side so it could swipe a card across the lock. Unlike Foster's this one worked and the garage door slid up.

"Go," it growled. "Go far. Reak-tor."

"Reactor?"

It held out its bloody arm and he saw the patched-together controller on its wrist. It was too far away to read but he saw flashing numbers. "Reak-tor. Go far."

Paul turned to run, then hesitated. "What about you?"

"No place for Rok-ket. Go." Then it, too, hesitated. "Wait. Take." It ripped something its collar and threw it to him, a bloody little parcel. "For pain, if tor-ture."

Still Paul hesitated, and the pistol came up. "Go or die! Pistol or reak-tor, die."

Finally Paul leapt into action and seconds later he was speeding away in his car. He had a last glimpse of the bloody, ragged little figure as it turned back into the complex. He didn't see, moments later, that it pulled a a pair of car key fobs from its pouch and tried them until lights on one of the vehicles flashed.

Paul was five miles away and still felt the heat when the complex's reactor went up. He'd tell the police that he heard the reactor klaxon go off when he was in the vehicle bay and ran for his life, and there was no one left alive to contradict him.

It wasn't until he got home, many hours later and after many interrogations, that he remembered the little package 89P13 - no, Rocket - had thrown him. Under the dried blood was a latex pocket, maybe the finger from a glove, and inside that were five green painkiller pills.

He remembered Chang telling him of 89P13's renewed sensitivity to pain. 89P13 - no, Rocket - had stopped taking the pills. He'd been hoarding them, and there was only one reason to do that. Paul sat remembering the sad, broken little beast in its cage, and knew that after the way they'd treated it, it could only end with death. Someone was going to die after all it went through. He'd thought it would be 89P13, but Rocket had managed to take quite a few people with him when he went down.

Paul went on with his life. There were investigations, and rumors, but the secretive little project had few outside records and practically everyone who knew what had really gone on had been vaporized in a reactor explosion. He cited the institutional secrets act when interrogated and was eventually released. Within six months he was once more employed working on cybernetics but he never touched animal research again. Another year went by before he noticed a peculiar icon on his chat request screen at home.

It was a five pointed star, single point down, with a black speck near the center and a mixture of light and dark shading. A chill ran down his spine when he realized the speck was a nose and that the points of the "star" were ears, cheek ruffs and chin. The shadows were pale fur around a darker mask. Paul had seen only one animal face in his life with that shape and shading and with great trepidation he accepted the chat request.

"Hello?," he typed.

"I am watching you," came the reply. "If you go back to what you helped do, I will find you. I let you go once. Once is all you get."

"89P13?"

"ROCKET."

"Of course. Rocket. You know I tried to help you. As much as I could. It wasn't much but I did what I could."

"I know." At the far end of the connection Rocket's ears drooped for a moment as he remembered the cage. If it hadn't been for the moments of human kindness he would have killed himself. Or many, many more people would be dead. Only Paul Foster's efforts to make his life less of a living hell had kept him from amping up the reactor until it took out the entire city instead of just the compound. Only that occasional bit of kindness had kept him from becoming a creature of pure hate.

"Where are you? I thought you died at the complex."

"Stay good, Doctor. I don't want to have to see you again."

Paul sat back, remembering the bloody thing he'd seen turn back into the compound and the broken little beast in the cage. Which was the real Rocket? What had the team created before they died?

At the other end of the severed connection Rocket curled up in the leafy bed Groot made for him and tried to sleep. He'd had to contact Foster, had to warn him. He didn't want to kill the one kind human as he had the others, but he would at the least indication it was all happening again.

Talking to Paul had brought back bad memories and Rocket slept badly, shuddering in his leafy bed despite Groot's attempt to soothe him. Soon he would meet the other Guardians. Soon he would begin to heal. All he had now was Groot and a life that at least wasn't as hellish as it once was. He had no need of the green pills on Foster's mantle, the ones in the jar labeled This Must Never Happen Again.


End file.
